It’s the Happy Slam. For us too!

Picture this. A packed stadium around the tennis court. So full that it feels like even an extra mug of that beer at the stalls will take some much-needed elbow room. Everybody is sweating a tad more than is comfortable. But no one seems to care. It’s almost surreal. Expectant, excited and charged, the sound of the ball syncs perfectly with the several thumping hearts. Only to be broken by ear-splitting screams of delight from fans when their favorite player makes a winning move. A billion tennis fans around the world know exactly what I am talking about. They know the feeling. They love it. In a way they care about few other things. And I find myself wondering what it’ll take for a brand to be the object of such passionate adulation. That was the thinking that got us started on our sports marketing journey.

And it’s the same aspiration that has got us where we are today: shaking hands with Tennis Australia as we become their Official Digital Innovation Partner for the Australian Open http://www.infosys.com/ausopen. And with this partnership we aspire to further enthrall tennis fans. To wow them with experiences they haven’t even begun to imagine. And find ways for brand Infosys to become an inextricable part of that fan euphoria.

We know a little help from technology and lots of natural human ingenuity is what it’ll take for us to serve it, smash it and win it. After all, over the past three years that has helped us completely reimagine the player and fan experience for ATP, the Association of Men’s Tennis globally. Now we will help Australian Open navigate their next. We are exploring leveraging a number of technologies that can include our AI platform to gather insights from the millions of records of game data, building holographic simulations of game play and strategy, leveraging next-generation VR experience to simulate on-court viewing from anywhere, or our deep analytics to analyse and perhaps predict player performance - it’s truly about creating the future of the tennis experience.

As a marketer I am excited too - this is not just a brand or a tech partnership, it’s a brand AND tech partnership. For I firmly believe that a credible brand of the future is likely to be the one that participates in creating that future. And sports as a platform does offer that unique playground - billions of fans around the world, captive eyeballs and footfalls (in the marketer’s lingo) and immense tech potential to serve the digital-first generation. Instead of just marketing our technology to these fans, we have chosen a path of marketing with technology - not just talking the talk by plastering our brand across crowded sporting extravaganzas, but walking the talk by making the brand integral to the technology experience.

For us the game plan now is very much like the game of tennis – as Billie Jean King said, “A perfect combination of violent action taking place in an atmosphere of total tranquility”. It’s the Happy Slam. For us too.